 There's a decent epistemological argument to be made against labeling the new Esquire the best magazine issue ever. (Who's to say there won't one day be one even better?) But put the semantics aside, and, dude, this must be the best magazine issue ever. • The venerable men's magazine has a proud literary tradition, and in recent years, under editor-in-chief David Granger, it's been particularly on its game, smart and funny and witty and substantial and totally lacking in self-seriousness. But the 70th Anniversary Issue, on stands this week, outdoes itself. • It's a fantastic mix of top-notch new writing (Charles Pierce on JFK, Esquire's "man of the last 70 years"; Cal Fussman on Muhammed Ali; Mike Sager on the man of tomorrow, a 17-year-old today) and well-constructed tributes to the magazine's past. There's a fascinating and funny roundup of style tips through the decades, a hugely compelling collection of the 70 greatest sentences from articles past, by authors like Philip Roth and Ralph Ellison and John Steinbeck and David Sedaris, and "The Esquire 70," a list of 70 things "that make us very happy to be alive today." • It's these well-executed front-of-book-type charts and lists, filled with fascinating and digestible historical tidbits about society, about Esquire, about magazine-making, that put the issue over the top, that make you eager—forgive the ad-speak—to turn each page and discover what's coming next. And to top it all off, there's a special pull-out of Gay Talese's 1966 "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold," which the editors have chosen as the best Esquire piece ever. It's a good read—and, even better, it's in its own glossy pamphlet, just right for savoring at the corner coffee shop over a long, leisurely Sunday afternoon.
—Jesse Oxfeld
 In our Us Weekly culture, writers have become just another category of "Page Six" celebrities. Readings are filled, yes, but writers' fame arises just as often from being famous as from being, say, smart or clever. Amid that mad culture, however, Identitytheory.com is a dose of reader-friendly Zoloft, a comfortably lowkey place for writers to show off their talent rather than their shtick. • Founded in 2000 by Matt Borondy, the site's editor, Identitytheory.com offers blogs, satire, fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. Even better, there's a streamlined, no-frills format and an open-door policy regarding submissions (shorter rather than longer, please). But the real drawing point has become Robert Birnbaum's literary interviews—some with that "Page Six" crowd, many not. • Borondy and Birnbaum, a longtime Boston journalist, first bonded over a mutual interest in Howard Zinn, and Birnbaum's first interview with the People's History of the United States author (there've been subsequent exchanges) has the odd effect of making the reader feel both smarter and dumber at the same time—smarter because you learn so many new names, events, and moments, and dumber because you didn't know them in the first place. • But that's what all of Birnbaum's brilliant interviews are like: luxuriously long, sometimes funny, and deeply engaged. This is why writers should be celebrities, for their intelligence and not for their hucksterism. And this is why Identitytheory.com is worth reading: because it's casual and welcoming and not elitist and overreaching—just like a good book.
—Sarah Cavill
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